Free The Blue Girl by Charles De Lint Page B

this bit of a thing about heights. I couldn’t approach any kind of a high drop-off without a vague whirly feeling starting up in the bottom of my stomach. And then I’d get a pulling sensation from the edge, like I needed to step right off and go tumbling down.
    But tonight I wasn’t nervous as we crunched across the gravel to the edge of the roof. I wasn’t nervous looking down the two-story drop to the ground below, either. My usual height fears and earlier anxiety had been replaced with anticipation. I could still remember the way my body had felt as I lifted from the landing earlier, but it was only in my memory now. I wanted to actually experience it again.
    “Coasts clear,” Sairs said, leaning over the edge to look around.
    “Are you ready?” Tommery asked me.
    The other fairies paired up on either side of me again when I nodded. When they laid their hands on my legs, I felt all my weight disappear once more, and we began to rise from the rooftop.
    I’d had dreams of flying before and they were much like this: I’d suddenly remember that I didn’t have any weight and I could just lift up from the ground if I wanted to. I’d rise up and up, a foot, another, a yard, two yards. Finally, I’d be above the treetops, and off I’d go, soaring. Free.
    I can’t begin to tell you what it’s like to have it happen for real.
    We drifted away from the rooftop, and there was only air below us now, with the ground two stories down. I wanted to go higher. I wanted to fly among the stars and touch the moon.
    I wanted to do it on my own.
    “Well, sure,” Quinty said when I told them as much. “Everybody let go.”
    “No!” Tommery cried from where he was floating beside us.
    But it was too late. The fairies pulled their hands away, and down I went.
    I don’t think I even had time to realize what was happening before I hit the ground.
    There was this awful, wet sound. There was a shock of pain like I’d never felt before.
    And then everything went black.
    *    *    *
    “ ...   for a laugh,” I heard Quinty saying as I came swirling back out of the darkness.
    “Oh, yes,” Tommery said. “Very humorous.”
    “Well, it was kind of funny when he hit the pavement.” That was Krew.
    Sairs snickered. “Did you see his face?”
    “Oh, very funny,” Tommery said, his voice tight with anger. “And look at him now. Hilarious. And dead.”
    I blinked my eyes open to find them all standing around me and forced myself to sit up. I wasn’t dead. I felt perfectly fine.
    “I’m okay,” I said.
    Tommery turned to look at me. “No, you’re not.”
    “No, really.”
    “Look at yourself.”
    I looked down and saw that my hips disappeared into another pair of hips. I turned to look behind me, and there I was. Lying on the pavement, neck at a weird angle, blood pooling around my body. Except I was here as well, looking down at my dead self.
    I couldn’t seem to focus on what I saw. It made no sense.
    “But  ...  but  ...”
    I couldn’t get any more words out.
    A huge wave of sadness went through me. That connection we all take for granted—the way we’re part of our body, the way our body is a part of the world around us— it was gone. I felt alone and lost, and this gibbering panic rose up inside me, swelling until I thought my head would burst.
    Then everything went black again.

 
     

    So I survived that first year at Redding High, no thanks to Ken and Barbie and their cooler-than-thou posse. I stopped trying to avoid them, but I gave them absolutely no reaction when they ragged on me, so they tended to focus on easier targets most of the time. Or at least more reactive ones. We sure didn’t become friends or anything. They still had something to say about each day’s outfit and they tagged Maxine and me as “the homo girls” because we were always together, but I could live with that.
    As I get old and wise, moving into my seventeenth year, I find it gets easier to ignore stupid